Last night I was able to call the appartment warden, get him to get me a direct line to the flat upstairs, and complain to them about the noise, ask them to keep it down,and they stopped. It was a rush, even better than learning how to order a pizza.The sense of achievement in learning a language is awesome- even if it is only Korean.
Learning korean- best tip is to make korean friends. You'll learn what you need to know, the day-to-day stuff- and bypass the irrelevant stuff.

Learning to read hangul in a day? Do you include all the alterations that occur with different consonant combinations? If so, I take my hat off to you ...

Take your hat off son, it took me a few hours. At first I was slow but by the end of the week my reading speed was pretty good or so I was told. Anyhow learning to read and write is easy, comprehension is a totally different story.

I've been here for about 17 months now, and have only aquired very basic reading skills. "Oh, that's a "p", there's an "m"" etc. I don't know why I haven't learned; it's not that it's too difficult for me (no jokes about cunning linguists please!). It's just...I don't know - interest maybe? I like Sanskrit. I feel that learning Korean exstensively, while fun, has no real end-purpose for me. Sanskrit, on the other hand, is a life-long flirtation.

For people who've never had any exposure to Korean before the deal is 'learn to convert to romanisation' in a day.

I didn't learn to convert to romanization. I learned the sounds as they sound in Korean. When I studied Japanese I did the same thing. Romanization of a language that uses a different script is useful for travellers but not for a serious student. It is just a crutch that will ultimately slow you down.

I don't claim to have perfect pronunciation, but I do stand by what I said earlier, it is easy to learn how to read and write Korean, including all the patchim transformations, within one day. Reading quickly or fluently is not what I claim to have been able to do.

It's cheating because you were already familiar with hiragana/katakana, which is really just more complex hangul(numberwise). Since you already had an idea of what to expect walking into it, you knew what to look for.

Likewise, if I sit down and start studying Japanese now, I'll be at an advantage with learning the hiragana/katakana, and I also have a slight advantage with the kanji, since I studied a bit of Chinese when I was younger. I could also learn one of the other romance languages besides French(like Spanish), because I'm more familiar with what to expect.

hirakana and katakana all look the same and are difficult to decipher, when all jumbled together.

What is a killer about Kanji is that one character has at least 2 or 3 different pronunciations and you have to choose a right pronunciation for a specific context. Japanese is easy enough at the beginning level, but cannot be mastered in a short term.

hirakana and katakana all look the same and are difficult to decipher, when all jumbled together.

What is a killer about Kanji is that one character has at least 2 or 3 different pronunciations and you have to choose a right pronunciation for a specific context. Japanese is easy enough at the beginning level, but cannot be mastered in a short term.

Mm hmmm....and hangul is similarly a beginner's field day. The only perplexing thing about hiragana/katakana to me is the sheer number of bits to learn. Aren't there like 60+?